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Missing Student Found Dead in Fraternity House

November 24, 2008 RSS Feed Print

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An Illinois Institute of Technology sophomore who had been missing for eight days was found dead in a fraternity storage closet this weekend. The Cook County medical examiner determined the cause of death of Benjamin Collen as asphyxia due to inhalation of carbon dioxide from a canister. Police are still trying to determine how the student's body could have gone unnoticed for so long in the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity house, where about 25 people reside.

Police are not investigating foul play because the 19-year-old's death has been ruled accidental.

Collen was a member of the fraternity and had been a resident there at some point but was most recently living at a nearby university housing complex.

Tags:: students,; Illinois,; colleges

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when you can't find someone? Would you look in the place that they live? I would to, only that wasn't the fraternity house. Would you look where they were last seen? I would to, only that was near the Chicago lakefront where the majority of the search effort was focused.
The presumption in the report is that he was dead for the full 8 days and that's the part that I took issue with. That has not been substantied in any way. He was in a closed room that was locked from the inside, for what could have been much less than 8 days, with an open window in a house that almost never had anyone in it because the brothers were out looking for him.
Based on what I have read many other places this has created a great deal of unfounded and under informed finger pointing at the fraternity. You may say "The article said that the death had been ruled an accident. So there was no need for the lengthy post.." but based on the reaction I've read and your own accustation that has not stopped anyone from creating misinformed theories and blaming the innocent.
Yes the victims are the family and Ben and I mourn for them like many others. But the brothers were also extremely close to him. I knew this young man and it is a deep and personal loss for a lot of people. You may mock the relationship between fraternity brothers but that's your problem or misunderstanding. You mock them with terms like "bros" or "brosephs" but it's unfair to demean their relationship with him just because you can't get past a stereotype. The men of this fraternity are very close and take their bond very seriously. How would you feel if I mocked the loss of you finding a close friend dead?
My problem, as I said, with this report is the same I have seen everywhere else. Saying effectively "they wonder how he could been in the house for 8 days and them not notice" is misleading, incomplete and inaccurate.

Sean Cassidy of IL 5:39PM November 25, 2008

The article said that the death had been ruled an accident. So there was no need for the lengthy post on how this is SO NOT THE BROS' FAULT, DUDE. As for how "the young men of Alpha Sigma Phi," their feelings, and their needs, seriously, stop it. Call me a traditionalist, but I'm going to say that the victim here is the actual dead person and his family, not the 25 brosephs who apparently didn't have the sense to look in every room of the frat house when they coordinated all those searches for him.

Amalie of NY 5:04PM November 25, 2008

I mean no disrespect to the dead. That being said, unless the unoccupied room was a vacuum-sealed bunker or a freezer, after eight days, the body should have been well into the putrefaction stage of decomposition and the smell would have been incredibly foul. Depending on how well the house was insulated, there also probably would have been an increase in insect activity that likely would have overflowed into other rooms of the house. So, yeah, even the dumbest cop on the planet would be asking how 25 guys could have shared a house with a rotting corpse for eight days and not realized it.

Amalie of NY 3:48PM November 25, 2008

Missing Student Found Dead in Fraternity House

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